Testserver Patch Notes - Oberon Patch 2 / F2P Launch

As of April 10, Albion Online will be entirely free to download and play. Existing players can continue playing as normal, while new players can create an account and play the game without purchasing a pack. The Premium system continues unchanged, and Premium status can still be purchased with either real-world money or ingame currency. For more information about this change, please see this thread: forum.albiononline.com/index.p…/104118-Free-to-Play-FAQ/

Improvements

Moving between clusters within a city (main city, bank, marketplace, etc.) no longer requires a cooldown period

You will lose your current lock if you return to the Royal Continent using any other city portal

You will gain a city's portal lock if you return to the Royal Continent using that city's portal or when respawning there after death in the Outlands

Respawn Changes

The ability to respawn "in nearest city" is replaced with an ability to respawn "in last visited city"

The ability to respawn "at nearest territory" is removed, but you can set any territory tower as a home.

You can still respawn at a home. However, when you've set a home, you will lose your home binding when you choose to respawn "in last visited city".

Special Island Move

During a special transition period of one month, you will be able to move your personal and guild islands to a city of your choice

Each island may only be moved a single time and the move is wasted if not used during this transition period

Increased Resource Respawn Speed

To prepare for a potential influx of low-level players, the respawn rate of resources in safe and yellow zones has been increased (i.e. the refill time for these resource nodes has been reduced):

T2 respawns about 285% faster (now 21 seconds, was 60s)

T3 respawns about 400% faster (now 45 seconds, was 180s)

T4 respawns about 500% faster (now 100 seconds, was 500s)

T5 respawns about 170% faster (now 450 seconds, was 750s)

Guild Cost Changes

Cost to found a guild: 25,000 Silver → 100,000 Silver

Cost of a new guild island: 50,000 Silver → 75,000 Silver

Adventurer's Challenge Changes

Free users can now complete the Daily Bonus and earn Challenge Points. However, they can only claim the weekly and monthly rewards after buying 30 days of Premium status AND having Premium status active.

So the 10 LP for completing the Daily Bonus, is only available for free players?

I believe its for non premium users yes, as premium you get 20 per day, as free you gonna have to complete a daily to get 10

Yeah, but the feelsbad is that, I am paying for premium to get a benefit 20 LP et al. That is it's own thing.

Now, players can get 10 LP for completing a daily, but only free players. That is it's own thing.

I guess I just feel like, if there is going to be 10 LP for completing a daily. It should be for everyone. Excluding the paying people from a bonus related to daily challenges is just weird.

I get that it is supposed to be to give free players a little LP. I just don't see the harm in changing it to all players and have the premiums able to get 10+20 vs the free players 10, rather than 20 vs 10.

If 10 LP is no biggie to toss to F2P, then 10 LP should be no biggie to toss to premium players to, for the cost of doing the dailies.

It's not a hill I am looking to fight over though, since 10 LP is in fact not a huge deal.

I agree with @Piddle - any perk that free to play gets should by default, be extended to the premium users. The idea behind subscription layering is that each higher level encompasses the level below it - and some.

I also agree that it's not an issue I would really get in a huff about, but I would caution SBI to consider what opening this door this might signal to premium players.

I agree with @Piddle - any perk that free to play gets should by default, be extended to the premium users.

In effect you do. If you no longer pay for premium, you will receive this perk as well. And if you continue to pay for premium (thank you very much!), you actually receive twice as much as free players and you don't have to work for it!

@Eltharyon I don't quite follow Henkys. A couple assumptions: Both players play the game enough to earn the F2P LP.

A F2P player wants LP, they exchange playtime for 10 LP.
A Prem player wants LP, they exchange playtime (12 hours) for 10 LP.

We've essentially now signaled that in this specific LP market, 1/2 of all the time I currently pay for can also be earned by players not paying. This is further exacerbated if the time required to earn 10 LP in the F2P market takes less than 12 hours.

In my opinion, it is not effectively the same - my LP is now at a minimum 1/2 as valuable as before - from a $/minute perspective.

I also agree that it's not an issue I would really get in a huff about, but I would caution SBI to consider what opening this door this might signal to premium players.

It should not signal anything... because Supply/Demand.

"on the surface" - it might signal that its better to switch to F2P and just farm silver to pay for gold to pay for Sub. In which case Gold price will increase dramatically, prompting people to whip out credit cards to just pay subscription.

In a sense its a perfect model, that is a closed loop. The more players think "Premium is not worth it" and switch to F2P (and try to farm silver to pay for Premium) - the more value will Gold have, the less players can bother to farm silver (or they buy less Gold with silver, once Gold price skyrockets), the more players are inclined to just pay a subscription with a credit card (via direct Sub or buying Gold)...

I agree with @MEATCUP in the way that for a Premium player who plays every day, it seems like my LP privilege has dropped 50% in value. Of course if I didn't play every day, or even play at all, my Premium would still get me 20LP per day, but the point is I DO PLAY EVERY DAY, and that makes it feel like a F2P player has a bonus that I can't get.

@Captainrussia It most certainly a signal. Each of these situations you describe are very real supply/demand shifts.

You also assume very basic S/D models - we don't know the elasticity of either S/D curve here, so words like 'dramatically' are not founded on anything outside of basic understanding and assumptions. While you are 100% accurate in theory, we can't put all our eggs in this basket quite yet.

Historically, you've been spot on and the reasoning is sound - so I can't say you're wrong. Maybe embellishing a bit. XD

The "Show Effects" option has been removed from settings (default: on)

Why? You do know there's people that play this game that can only take part in ZvZ's with this option set to "self only" right? Without this they can't engage in medium to large scale fights at all. What's the reason behind this being removed?

I agree with @Piddle - any perk that free to play gets should by default, be extended to the premium users.

In effect you do. If you no longer pay for premium, you will receive this perk as well. And if you continue to pay for premium (thank you very much!), you actually receive twice as much as free players and you don't have to work for it!

You are giving a benefit to free players that premium players don't get. That the benefit pays out LP, and premium also pays out LP, is somewhat beside the point here. If you change it from an LP reward to another kind of reward, the problem becomes instantly apparent. "Free to play players gain an addition 1M silver for completing daily challenges."

The daily activity reward for free players is better than for premium players

The problem, as I see it, stems from how you worked backwards from wanting f2p players to have LP and created a system to give them that. Rather than balancing out the two things from front to back.

For the record. If you had just said that f2p players get 5-10 LP passively (I understand why this is bad) and premiums get 20 LP passively. I'd have shrugged and moved on. It's the weird tying it to a an activity that is available to both, but for which the non-premium player now gets a larger incentive, that makes it sort of obviously unfair.

Why? You do know there's people that play this game that can only take part in ZvZ's with this option set to "self only" right? Without this they can't engage in medium to large scale fights at all. What's the reason behind this being removed?